The present invention relates to point-of-sale apparatus, and particularly to apparatus to be used at a point-of-sale, such as a check-out counter for identifying and weighing the articles being purchased in order to compute their prices.
Supermarkets and other retail stores now commonly include check-out counters having optical scanners which identify the purchased articles, e.g., by a bar code, and weighing scales which weigh the articles in order to compute their prices. At the present time, the weighing scale is usually separate and distinct from the optical scanner, so that the check-out clerk first places the article over the optical scanner to identify the article, and then places the article on the weighing scale to determine its weight and its price. This requires separate manipulations of each article, which thereby substantially increases the overall time required by a clerk for checking-out a large number of purchased articles.
Point-of-sale apparatus is also known which includes both an optical scanner and a weighing scale and which enables the clerk to perform both the identification and weighing operations at the same time. Such known apparatus, however, is very expensive, and therefore its use is very limited.
An object of the present invention is to provide point-of-sale apparatus having advantages in the above respects.